"Whether California’s application of the death penalty is so drawn out and arbitrary that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment will be argued on Monday before a federal appeals court in Pasadena."

I spoke to Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research and author of the 2014 study: Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times. Cooper spent two years shadowing 50 affluent, middle class and low-income families in Silicon Valley to understand how they are faring as big high-tech firms move in the neighborhood and reshape their lives.

On the June 30th edition of Your Call, we’ll have a conversation about the explosion of the tech industry. Billion dollar companies were once rare. Today, there are more than 50 billion dollar companies in Silicon Valley, with more added every other week.

On the June 22nd edition of Your Call, we'll have a conversation with D.W. Gibson, journalist and author of The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the 21st Century. By interviewing a wide cross section of New Yorkers, from a drug dealer to a banking executive, Gibson gets inside the varied ways people experience and perceive the transformation of neighborhoods by the influx of new wealth and new residents. What does gentrification look like where you live?

"Graffiti covers the interior walls throughout Richardson Hall, a vacant historic Spanish Colonial Revival style structure at the corner of Laguna and Hermann streets built in 1925 as part of the now-defunct San Francisco State Teacher's College complex.

On the December 9th, 2014 edition of Your Call, we're discussing creative responses to displacement. Median rent in San Francisco is over $3,000 a month. The city is now one of the most unequal urban areas in the country. Many long-term renters have been evicted. From 2000 to 2010, San Francisco’s black population dropped by 19 percent. What place does art have in the fight against gentrification? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar, and you.

Over the past few years, San Francisco has been getting a lot of press about the tensions in our quickly changing city. It all seems to be magnified in San Francisco’s Mission District: a sunny destination with a growing number of expensive restaurants and rent prices. It’s a neighborhood where Mark Zuckerberg now owns a home, and a place where an affluent, whiter population is displacing lower-income residents, many of them Latino.

Every place has a history hidden that lives beneath what you can see on the surface. Just take the Mission District. The Bart Station at 24th street and Mission is called Plaza Sandino by some -- because in the 1980’s Pro-Sandanista protesters would rally there. Right down the street, Potrero del Sol Park is better known to those who grew up here as La Raza park -- back in the 70’s it was a major gathering spot for low rider cars. This neighborhood has also been called the birthplace of Latin Rock.

When a landlord and a tenant are involved in a dispute, an eviction from the property is the last resort. And when evictions do occur in San Francisco, there are two people who are involved with every single one. They both make up the Eviction Assistance Unit at the Sheriff’s Department, but they don’t really act like cops. Their job is to visit anybody served an eviction notice and try to connect them to resources.

The changing face of San Francisco is a source of controversy for many locals. In his latest one-man show, "Feisty Old Jew," local performer Charlie Varon demonstrates how the issue can be a solid source of comedy too.

Twitter. With more than 400 million users a month, it’s the second-most-popular social network in the world. A report from the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project found that nearly ten percent of adults get their news from Twitter.

If you walk down Mission Street this weekend you’ll see family members holding pictures of loved ones in one hand and candles in another. You may see ofrendas--small altars set up to pay tribute to people who have passed away. It’s a tradition that’s been present in the Mission for years, but how it’s celebrated depends on who you ask.

As the tsunami of foreclosures in Oakland finally subsided over the past year, residents of the city's flatlands neighborhoods looked around at the new landscape and saw less room for themselves and people like them. Many of their neighbors were gone, of course. And many of the foreclosed homes were snapped up — not by new homeowners, but by large-scale investors, including national and global corporations.

The nation may have been on shaky economic ground as it kicked off 2013, but there was little sign of that here in San Francisco. The city is still in the midst of a tech boom, which has fueled construction and retail investment.

Tonight on City Visions we’ll talk about the unintended effects of urban renewal in the Bay Area. San Francisco has been undertaking a huge effort to revitalize its most blighted neighborhoods. What are the effects of gentrification on lower-income residents? Is there a way to improve the neighborhood without sacrificing the neighbor?

Guests:

Peter Cohen, Co-Director of the Counsel of Community Housing Organization

Oscar Grande, Community Organizer with People Organized to Demand Environment/Economic Rights